


Gallons and gallons

by Jupiter2012



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV), Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, General aura of doom, M/M, PTSD, Suicide, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jupiter2012/pseuds/Jupiter2012
Summary: He dies at seventeen, he wakes up at sixteen.It's a spiderweb of possibilities; the jenga of gods.Clay wishes he didn't have to play.





	Gallons and gallons

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Straw Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/907057) by [AzarDarkstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AzarDarkstar/pseuds/AzarDarkstar). 



> While writing my main fic (Starless Nights), I decided to take a little break. "Gallons" - not to be confused with "galleons" (wink). The idea of having more than one extra chance is inspired by AzarDarkstar's amazing bleach fic, "Straw Man"
> 
> *Warnings: Blood, suicide, violence, PTSD, please do not read if you are not comfortable. Enjoy.*

Clay lies in a pool of his own blood, gazing up at the run-down ceiling of Liberty High’s main hallway. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine, if only for a fraction of a second, that he’s back on the deserted theatre rooftop with Hannah, watching the stars. Staring up into the endless cosmos. The aching pain of the gunshot has already numbed into faint tingles along his spine, the ringing in his ears faded to a shallow drum. He can’t move his hands, and his breathing has begun to stutter.

He’s dying.

It’s not all that bad, though. Tony’s already dead beside him, eyes glassy and sightless. He took the first bullet. Sacrificed himself. In vain, because Clay will join him very soon. Every second, it becomes infinitely more difficult for him to hold onto life. Like he’s trapped inside an enormous hourglass, and the sand is flowing down on top of him. It’s suffocating.

They’re not the only ones. Nine students are outside on stretchers, three in body bags. Liberty High is ruined. This tragedy will become a part of the town, hanging over it like a black blimp of death, until the day the last miserable shop closes down and the streets are abandoned. His parents will cry, but he’s too tired to really care.

He’s spent the last few weeks wide awake. Unable to sleep. And now, it seems almost gracious that he would be unable to wake, too.

He practically welcomes the impending darkness.

There were so many things he could have done. Saved Hannah. Jeff. Jessica. Alex. They were so young. Even now, he thinks he could have - should have done something. Jumped in front of Tony, instead of it being the other way around. Said something. Distracted the skinny, masked shooter, and let the people around him escape.

There are sirens wailing in the background, but Clay can’t hear them, only feels the pounding rush of blood being pushed out of him. He closes his eyes. He’s only seventeen years old.

He dies.

 

* * *

  
And then he wakes up, sixteen again.

As soon as he figures out he’s got another chance, he begins planning.

In his scrawling hand, he writes down events, incidents, and dates as best he can remember them. He tries his best. He’s full of hope for a second beginning, a different time around. He even confesses to Hannah, just like he wanted to in his first life. He protects her. But he’s always been a little reckless, gets on the wrong side of Bryce early on.

“You know something I don’t, Jensen?”

“I know you’d rape any girl you wanted if you had the chance,” he spits. He's poking the tiger with a stick and he knows it. 

There's an anger in his voice that isn’t directed at _this Bryce_ , not really. But then _this Bryce_ punches him a little too hard, breaks his nose, and leaves him lying unconscious, belly up on the locker room floor. It’s a freak accident. By the time Hannah comes to look for him after school, he’s already drowned in his own blood.

 

* * *

 

But he doesn’t disappear, fade away or become an apparition. He wakes up - again, sixteen for the third time.

And so it continues. Every single time, Clay goes for Hannah first. He rips out his heart for her. He even goes to her parents a few times, and on his knees, tells them everything that could happen. He lives for her. He dies for her. But it’s not until he gives her his soul, completely and utterly, that she decides to stay.

After Hannah, he realizes, there are others. Preventing Jeff’s death is always easy, but saving Jessica is another matter. It isn’t about the night of the party; he fixes that almost immediately. It’s because she doesn’t recognize the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Clay has come to realize that Foley is just a scared little shit. When he finally decides just _tell_ Jessica the worst things Bryce has ever done, names excluded, of course, he hopes for the best. He thinks it works, though, because as a result, Jessica avoids Bryce like he’s the devil.

Because he _is_. Two more times, Clay lets his anger take a hold of him, confronts Bryce, and then dies in some awful, twisted way. In his first life, he never though the jock could be this sadistic. He’s a _psychopath_. It’s enough to make him tremble violently when they make eye contact in subsequent cycles.

He wakes up again. This time, he fails early on. Hannah’s gone again, and the thirteen tapes are passed around on a little blue USB stick. It's **hilarious** , he thinks humorlessly, how certain events stay the same, yet change. Clay doesn’t even try to avoid the shooting, just jumps in front of Tony this time, before the other has a chance. In his last fragments of a second, he turns quickly enough to see the expression of horror written on his friend’s face, before he hits the ground as well.

 

* * *

 

In an epiphanic moment, he realizes that Tyler Down is the shooter. His mask gets pulled off by Tony, with Jeff’s help, before he shoots them both in the head, then turns to finish off Clay. "Tyler, stop. Don't shoot," he forces out, and if he's begging, humiliated, it's only because he doesn't want to be shot again. Because it hurts _so_   _fucking bad_. The hooded eyes meet his, but Clay knows there's really no use. It has already been decided. He closes his eyes, and it ends quickly.

He breaks Tyler’s nose and arm the next time around, beats him up once, twice, three times. It only earns him a notably painful murder in the end.

 

* * *

 

Clay doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t understand how the cycles work, just somehow, instinctually knows that they will end when what he needs to do is done.

And eventually, he realizes that it’s not just Hannah he has to save. It’s everyone.

 _It’s easy_ , he thinks. But it’s not easy. Some people’s stories are almost impossible to change. Some change drastically every single cycle.

Tony will always die for him.

Bryce will always manipulate Foley.

If Hannah dies, Alex dies.

It becomes a sick sort of math. He feels like he’s a chess player, but every opposing move is played by himself. He’s constantly switching sides of the table. Else, every opposing move is played by a hand that is both invisible and unbeatable.

Almost every single story interlocks - a spiderweb of possibilities; the jenga of gods. 

He wishes he didn't have to play.

But will he live, content, in a world where Hannah’s gone, and he avoids the shooting? Or will that just make him die at eighty only to wake up sixteen again? No. He must save everyone. He has to do it.

It must be possible. 

Every try, he’s filled with so much fucking hope, he nearly gags on it. He thinks that maybe, possibly - if he tries hard enough, if he sells himself enough, if he plays the game viciously enough - this could be the one where he wins.

Because it's less painful, he thinks, to call it a game. Those losses, of his friends, his innocence - they're just necessary tactics he must play in order to claim the crown. 

_They're not real. They're not the final story._

He repeats the thought over, and over, and over in his foggy mind. But the memories of past cycles stay with him, fresh and bitterly clear despite his persistent attempts to forget. And even when he donates his brain and heart, his skin, every cell in his damn body, he can't reach the end.

When he fails, he tries to end it quickly. But it's never quick; it's always excruciating. Seconds chug by like hours in his final moments. 

He loses count of how many times he wakes up, sixteen again.

And then he realizes he’s ludicrously wrong, too, because even when Hannah, Jessica and Jeff are alive, Alex still dies, and Tyler still shoots up the school. Clay spends at least five cycles trying to figure it out. Each death is as agonizing as the last, but in time, he thinks he gets it, inconspicuously leaving the careful suggestions both teens need. Pointing influences away and towards them, like some bizarre fucking crisis fairy.

 

* * *

 

On the good days, it’s almost like a puzzle. Almost. On the bad ones, he wishes he could die and not wake up for once.

And one day, finally - _finally_ , he thinks he’s done it. Hannah’s safe, everyone is alive. But he gets called downstairs by his mother to the news that Tony’s been stabbed to death, caught in gang violence. He screams abuse at her, almost hysterical, certain it must be a sick joke. It’s not.

He climbs up their cliff and jumps off it.

He remembers, vaguely, from another lifetime, Tony telling him he wouldn’t die if he fell from that height. He doesn’t. He lies at the bottom of the cliff, both legs broken, and starves to death.

It’s by far the most agonizing pain he's ever felt. He refuses to return to the spot.

 

* * *

 

The next cycle, Hannah’s dead again, and Tony’s joined the same gang that killed him the last time. Clay is irate, and Tony is immovable.

“You have a death wish, Clay?” He’s actually threatening Clay. Hides his face behind cool silver shades; Tony's eyes always betray him. Clay can't muster the strength to fight back. “I can’t explain it,” he replies simply. He throws himself out of Tony’s mustang and into incoming traffic.

 

* * *

 

From Sunday - morning beginning to hallway - floor end, the cycle is almost exactly a year and a half long. Clay doesn’t know how many year and a halves have gone by now. He begins to think that winning is impossible. Even if he did finish, he isn't a kid anymore. Not in his head, or in his heart. He wakes up. He dies. It repeats.

He thinks he’s truly in hell.

He tries one last time. It’s difficult, gruelling work. He's been dragged though the dirt, turned inside out. Every misstep, his stomach drops, twisting and snarling like an abused canine. But this time, to his immense surprise, he makes it. All the way from Jeff, to Jessica, to Hannah, to Alex, Justin, Tyler and Tony. They all survive. He saves them - he fixes them. He survives.

He **wins**.

 

* * *

 

He thinks he should be happy, ecstatic even. But he’s fucked up. He jumps at loud noises. He avoids crowds religiously. He suffers frequent, debilitating panic attacks, sharp and repetitive. His friends stage an intervention to announce that they are worried about him and his despondency.

_What a joke._

One by one, he watches them move on. Hannah goes to New York, just like she wanted. Alex moves up north. Jeff’s preoccupied with his dreams of acceptance into the MLB. They live their lives, happy, healthy, their futures bright. He feels resentment only once, early on, when he drives past Monet’s and sees them all sitting together. They're wrapped cozily around their table, drinking coffee.

Being normal.

He forgives them eventually. Or he tells himself he does. They would never know, and therefore would never get the chance to understand. But it hurts on an indescribable level - that his friends have abandoned him so quickly. Deep down, it cuts him to the quick.

 

* * *

 

He’s suffocating yet again, but in a different way this time.

All of a sudden, the nightmares begin. He’s dying, always dying. There’s no bogeyman, only Bryce, with his smirks and his fists, the still smoking barrel of a shotgun, and the invisible hand. Instead of playing chess, it strangles him, takes him by the throat and _rips_.

He becomes thin, skeletal. He can't pinpoint what triggered the affliction exactly, just knows that eating food results in his stomach rejecting it come nightfall. Digestive acids burn him from the inside out, dissolving him, he thinks. His ribs begin to poke through the soft skin of his chest.

When it becomes particularly awful, he begins to taste his own blood in his mouth. Gallons and gallons - he’s choking on it. Too often when he walks down the stairs, he misses a step and imagines he’s in that free - fall of doom once again, only to come to his senses, huddled in a sweating, helpless ball on the floor. Too often, his own heartbeat drums in his ears, mocking him - unrelenting and deafening. He's finished the race this time, but his body and mind are broken. He barely remembers what it's like to feel sane.

He looks in the mirror for the first time in weeks and doesn’t immediately recognize the face that stares back. Dark purple circles adorn pale blue eyes. His cheeks are hollow and sharp. And there's a damaged, pitiful look in his eyes - haunted, empty, wretched.

He’s only eighteen years old. He’s wasting away.

 

* * *

 

In the end, it’s Tony who saves him.Takes him into his arms when he’s not expecting it, and squeezes gently, cursing shamelessly under his breath.

“Jesus, you're so fucking skinny, Clay.”

His tears come easily, bringing relief, and flowing like pearls down to his chin, but they just make Tony's frown deepen. It takes him a few seconds to realize that Tony's scared, petrified even. He hears sobs, high and broken. To his surprise, they are his own.

”I love you,” Tony tells him, breathing into his ragged hair, and he doesn’t even feel shock at the confession, just nods."You came back," he croaks. His voice is raspy from neglect, weak and shameful.

The arms around him tighten.“I’d die for you,” the other whispers to him, quiet, yet desperate.

Tony says it as if he isn't quite sure if it's the right thing to say. Like it's a secret. 

“I know,” is all he says.

He does know. 

 

* * *

 

It takes years, but Tony fixes him.

Puts him back together like he's the rusty, forsaken parts of a car, and it's only when he’s whole, clean, and able to smile again does he even attempt to tell Tony the truth.

To his utmost, gaping astonishment, Tony begins to remember, grasping at shards.

It’s only fragments. Pieces from each lifetime. Descriptions that he’d only know if he lived the same minutes, the same seconds. There are some moments he'd never wanted to revisit. Their deaths - side by side, so many times lying on the cold tiles of the hallway, close, but never quite touching.Tony stares at him as though he's seeing him truly for the first time. 

Endless regrets exist only behind the safety veil of their current lives. But still, the thoughts are painfully precise when they scratch their way to the surface, the memories heartbreaking in their accuracy. 

They've been together for decades, though it feels like centuries - living and dying as one for eternity. 

_He'd never really been alone._

He cries for the second time in this lifetime. 

**Author's Note:**

> It goes without saying that I don't condone murder, time travel or suicide. Please leave a review!


End file.
